Giving thanks for how far we've come since the levees broke

Posted August 29, 2018 at 8:33 AM

With a majestic sunset behind them, people join hands in prayer along the levee in New Orleans East on Aug. 28, 2006, for a vigil for the people who died during Hurricane Katrina and the flooding afterward. (FILE PHOTO BY ELIOT KAMENITZ)

Aug. 29 is the dividing line for New Orleanians. Before and after. Pre-K and post-K. The old life and the new life.

Thirteen years after Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches, there are still signs of loss. But the horrific damage done in 2005 is muted and in some cases invisible. Much of the city and the region has rebuilt. Downtown New Orleans is thriving.

Still, those awful days are imprinted on the people who lived through them. Maybe we don't think of them as often or ache the way we did in the months after the flooding. But the memories aren't far beneath the surface: the piles of ruined furniture and family treasures, the coating of mud on everything, the smell of muck and mold. Most of all, the neighbors who were lost.

Katrina and the levee failures took 1,833 lives and displaced a million people, tens of thousands of whom never returned. Those are losses that diminished us all.

Today, as they have on every anniversary, people will gather at the Katrina Monument at Shell Beach to honor the St. Bernard Parish residents who died during the storm.

A second-line Sunday in New Orleans was held to "remember the lives lost, honor the resiliency of the community, and advocate for the people most devastated by Hurricane Katrina." The Hip Hop Caucus, New Orleans Katrina Commemoration Foundation and others asked for remembrance and action. They're advocating for action on climate change and policies to ensure that low income and people of color aren't left out of disaster recovery.

Census numbers show the disproportionate effect the 2005 disaster had on black residents. New Orleans had 91,274 fewer black residents in 2017 than in 2000, according to the Data Center. By comparison, there were 7,945 fewer white residents in 2017.

The loss of so many African-American residents left whole neighborhoods largely empty and broke up communities that had strong ties.

Thirteen years after Katrina, the city is grappling with a lack of affordable housing and the ramifications of gentrification.

We have to find a way to balance the economic growth the city needs to thrive and affordability. The lower-income workers who keep New Orleans running should be able to afford to live in their city.

On this anniversary, we should all dedicate ourselves to solving those and the city's other challenges -- a high crime rate, unequal schools and the threat of flooding.

New Orleans is a singular city. Its joie de vivre is unmatched.

The word resilience is overused these days. But the people of New Orleans and our region embody it.

Essentially 100 percent of St. Bernard Parish was flooded on Aug. 29, 2005. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water after the federal levees collapsed during the storm.

Some people doubted us. Then-U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert was among the first. Two days after Katrina, he told an Illinois newspaper: "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." He also implied the city shouldn't be rebuilt.

He backtracked, but he'd made clear that he didn't believe in us. He wasn't the only one, just the most high-profile.

Yet here we are, 13 years later, celebrating New Orleans' tricentennial. We've had a tremendous amount of help from tens of thousands of people from across the nation -- and the world -- to get to this moment. We forever will be grateful to all of them.